


precipice

by Previously8



Category: The Tarot Sequence - K.D. Edwards
Genre: Asexual Quinn Saint Nicholas, Canon Asexual Character, First Kiss, Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Post-The Tarot Sequence Book 2: The Hanged Man, The Tarot Sequence Bingo, unnecessary descriptions of clouds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26417158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Previously8/pseuds/Previously8
Summary: "No, I just wanted to be with you for a bit.”Or, it's a stormy day outside so Max and Quinn spend some time together.
Relationships: Quinn Saint Nicholas/Matthias "Max" Saint Valentine
Comments: 6
Kudos: 26
Collections: TTS Bingo 2020 Fills





	precipice

**Author's Note:**

> another tts bingo fill! this one is for the prompt "boredom" :D  
> it strayed a little from the original idea, but I really wanted to write a maxquinn first kiss
> 
> warnings: none! (i needed a cute one after that last fic)

It’s a grey day outside. The wind is rattling all of the Sun Estate’s newly installed windows, whistling through the rooms that don’t yet have them, and turning the usually-idyllic beach into a dangerous strand of crashing waves and tumultuous undertow. 

Max is watching the clouds. It’s not a new hobby, but one that he rarely has reason to indulge now that the Sun Estate is his home and his days are filled by tasks and people and surprisingly little dread. Today, the clouds hang low and heavy, threatening rain even though there’s none in the forecast. All the same, no one is permitted outside under the penalty of a creative death, courtesy of Brand. The others are probably holed up in their rooms or the library or the kitchen. 

No one said anything about open windows though. Max leans back as the screen shakes with the force of the gusts. The waves crash. 

Being able to see the horizon like this is incredible. It stretches out to infinity or to Europe, whichever comes first and Max can almost imagine the wind in his hair has travelled all that way. The expanse of visible sky had been one of the first things to strike Max when they first moved in a few months back. He had briefly entertained the idea of trying to grow himself wings, or learning to fly a plane, just so he could sail up above the ocean and see how far the sky really went, how far up before he could see all of New Atlantis, all of America, all of the World. Until there is nothing but him, and the empty expanse of space.

Stupid ideas, of course, because the reality is never as good as his dreams. Besides, he’d have to go to space for some, and there’s not a sigil nor a plane that can take him there. 

The clouds roll above him, a mass of white and grey. Max watches them, curling his legs under him on the seat of the bay window, at lets his mind wander. 

“There you are!” someone calls. The door to the room Max has chosen for his sky-watching slams shut. 

Max turns. Quinn is grinning at him, holding a full bag of caramel popcorn and a blanket under one arm. He’s wearing one of Addam’s too-large T-shirts and is still in pyjama pants.

“I was looking _all over_ ,” Quinn complains good naturedly, joining Max in the small alcove of the bay window. He throws the blanket over himself and settles across from Max. He grins expectantly, “so, what are you doing here?”

“Watching the clouds,” Max tells him. He can’t be sure if Quinn knows this already through seer powers and is asking to be polite, or whether he’s actually trying not to See anything. He’s supposed to be doing that more, watching the world like most people do. Either way, he looks displeased with Max’s answer. 

“Aw man,” he says, opening the bag of popcorn and settling in. “I’m so bored. I was hoping it was something interesting.” 

“It’s not so bad.” Max says, even though he knows he doesn’t need to justify himself. Quinn’s settled in now.

“Better than nothing, you mean,” Quinn corrects with a grin. He shoves a handful of popcorn into his mouth and chews meditatively. “Corbie’s taken the TV room to himself to watch reruns, and Anna’s managed to convince Rune that she needs to attend their barely important arcana meeting.” Max looks to the door, wonders if he should be participating in that conversation too. Quinn catches his wrist before he can do more than sit up. His hand is warm. “It’s all just number-crunching, you don’t need to be there. Do you want some popcorn?”

He pulls his hand away and offers Max the bag. He takes some. It’s too sweet, the kind of thing that Anna probably managed to convince Rune to pick up behind Brand’s back. He nibbles at a piece, watching the waves. 

“You okay?” Quinn asks, more subdued. “You’re quiet.”

“I’m good,” Max says. He doesn’t know why this weird melancholy has stolen over him today. Something about the quiet of the house, maybe. The damp mellowness of the sounds and the lack of anything going on—it’s pushing on him, oppressive like water in his lungs. He’s abruptly glad that Quinn chose this moment to come see him. 

He looks away from the waves and over at his friend. Quinn is already looking back at him. “Did you come to get me for something? Do you want to go watch a movie or something?”

“Can’t, TV’s being used,” Quinn reminds him. Max doesn’t bring up the fact that there’s a TV in Addam’s guest room that they’ve used for more than one movie night in the past. “But no, I just wanted to be with you for a bit.”

His smile is sweet, and Max’s traitorous heart skips a beat. He shoves three more pieces of the sweet popcorn in his mouth and wills himself not to blush. 

Quinn scoots closer, so their shoulders are touching. He looks up at the clouds. 

“Wow those are dark,” he says. “I was hoping for a thunderstorm but most of the time it’s not even going to rain tonight.”

“Why’s Brand keeping us all inside, then?”

“Not sure,” Quinn admits. Max doesn’t realize he’s staring until Quinn slants his eyes to meet Max’s. “I think they’re worried about the wards, but that’s just a guess.”

Max hums. He doesn’t really care. He’s still meeting Quinn’s burgundy eyes. 

He thinks about the fact that Quinn found him, in this little out-of-the-way room at the end of a lesser-used wing of the house. That Quinn must have been looking for him, must have put effort into checking the rooms, guessing or not from whatever clues his probabilities could give him. That Quinn brought himself a blanket, like he’s intending to stay. That Quinn brought a special snack to share with him.

Max knows that they’re on a precipice. There have been more and more moments like this, tense but not in a bad way. There is something electric between them, hovering like a raincloud before a thunderstorm.

He knows that he and Quinn have been toeing the line between their current friendship and something else for a while now and that everyone else knows it too. He’s not blind to Quinn’s reactions to him, nor oblivious to his own. He’s tossed the problem back and forth in his mind a hundred times, wondering when the right time to make a move might be and wondering if it’s doomed to begin with, not even worth a try. He has no answers.

He also, he thinks, hasn’t actually asked a question. 

“Hey Quinn,” he says, redundantly because their eyes are still locked. 

Quinn blinks. “Yeah?” There’s a smile in his voice. 

“I think I want to kiss you,” Max says, which also isn’t a question but at least gets the point across. 

Max has entered free-fall—no more clouds, the precipice is long gone, he’s hurtling down, a thousand miles a second, towards the crashing waves. Wind shudders the window’s frame and sends strands of golden hair flying across Quinn’s freckled cheeks. Max finds himself focusing on the minutiae, the way that Quinn’s hair, longer now, curls; the way the light turns him soft and immaterial; the way his lips part as he draws breath. 

“I’d like that,” Quinn tells him, and free-fall ends. 

He’s suspended in time. There’s no sound but his own beating heart. He feels rather than hears himself check, “yeah?” 

“Yeah.” Quinn is already leaning closer, putting the popcorn to the side. Max leans in—too sharply, their teeth clack. He pulls back a bit, embarrassed, but Quinn follows, a smile on his lips. Their mouths brush once, twice, and slot together. 

Sound comes rushing in around him—the surf ravaging the beach, the wind roaring, his own heartbeat, the crinkle of the popcorn bag. He can count Quinn’s dark eyelashes like this, the smattering of freckles on the bridge of his nose. 

“You can close your eyes,” Quinn murmurs against his mouth, his own eyes opening to slits. 

“Sorry,” Max says, and closes them. 

He lets himself feel, instead. His pulse, thundering in contrast to the soft press of Quinn’s lips on his, slotting them together like puzzle pieces. Quinn’s hand, warm, on his bicep—steadying either himself or Max, he’s not sure. 

He brings his own hand up to cup Quinn’s head, accidentally drags the pads of his fingers across Quinn’s scalp and Quinn gasps—his mouth opens and the kiss is suddenly much more wet. Moving on feeling, on instinct, he opens his mouth in return. He can taste the sweet popcorn now, and it should be gross but it’s not. All he can smell is Quinn. 

He feels effervescent, like every nerve ending wants to laugh, like he’s in the middle of a metamorphosis. He’s warm, even with the wind. On instinct, he opens his mouth wider, traces Quinn’s lip with his tongue. 

Quinn pulls away. Max jerks himself back, but Quinn catches his shoulder with his other hand. 

Apologies are already spilling over Max’s lips, his eyes focused somewhere to the left of Quinn’s ear. Just like him to take without asking, step where he’s not wanted. 

“Sorry,” he says. “I didn’t—”

“It’s okay,” Quinn says. “Just unexpected.” He tilts his head, lets Max’s shoulder go. His other hand is resting on Max’s forearm. “Not bad, I think.”

Max checks, tentatively—Quinn is smiling, the corners of his lips stealing up. Some of the warmth that left him when Quinn backed off returns, stirring his stomach. Quinn must have a similar thought, or something like it, because he says, “we should probably get on the same page.”

Max nods. They’ve talked about things like this in a vague way. It sets Max’s heart beating to think they’re going to talk about themselves—about an _us_. 

He offers, “I know you don’t—” words fail him, “—sex.” 

Quinn giggles. “I’ve never experienced sexual attraction, no,” he confirms. “I still really like you. Like really, really.”

His cheeks are red. “Same here. I mean,” Max can feel himself blushing, too, “I, uh, really like you too.”

“Good,” Quinn says with another smile. Max looks at his lips without meaning too and Quinn’s smile grows. “But I also don’t know if I’ll ever have sex with you,” Quinn says, and despite his smile, his hand is clenched into a tight fist in his lap, “which is kind of important, I guess? Because I don’t want you to be disappointed. Or expecting things I won’t give?” He pulls his hand away from Max’s bicep and presses his face into his palms. “I thought this was going to be way easier,” he complains. “All of my memories make it seem easy.”

Max offers his palm, face up. “I can make it easy, probably,” he says, feeling a little more confident now that he knows Quinn is finding this just as hard. “I’m okay with that. The fact that we won’t have sex, right away or even ever.” 

Quinn peeks at him, dropping his hands from his face, his smile growing again. He puts his palm in Max’s. 

Max is glad for the point of contact, it makes the next part easier. “You know I— That I’m—” this is too difficult. Fuck talking about his trauma. Maybe he should just go jump in the ocean and float away to Europe. 

Quinn presses his palm more firmly against Max’s. “You don’t have to say anything right now. I believe you. And I want this with you.”

Max considers the easy way out that Quinn is offering. He weighs it in light of their past conversations about it, the confessions he’s made in the dark when only Quinn is there to hear. He knows Quinn isn’t lying about this—that if Max chose never to tell him anything more about his childhood, that Quinn would still be okay with him, with them. 

The wind rattles against the glass. Max finds the one thing that shouldn’t go unsaid, filing others away for another time. “I just need you to know that if I’m ever weird about something it’s probably not your fault,” Max says quickly. “I mean—flashbacks, and stuff.”

He has weird triggers. He has normal ones, too, the usual loud noises or whatever that his psychologist has told him are typical, for people who grew up like he did. But he also has other ones, ones that come from the fact, according to his psychologist, that no one grew up exactly like him. So, when certain sounds or certain touches or certain smells send him spiralling—it’s something to remember. Quinn knows of some, Max tries not to think about most. 

“I know,” Quinn says. Max meets his eyes. Quinn laces their fingers. “We can figure out what works for us, okay?”

Max smiles. “Does this mean I can call you my boyfriend?” he asks. 

“Yes!” Quinn surges forward hugging Max tightly around the shoulders. “Please,” he adds, quieter, a soft exhale against Max’s neck. 

Max curls his arms up around Quinn and holds him too. He doesn’t look back at the sky.

**Author's Note:**

> I have many many feelings about ace!quinn and also about the early stages of his and max's relationship when they're still trying to figure stuff out. can't wait to explore it more :DD
> 
> please leave a comment to let me know what you thought <333


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